The Suffocating Sea dah-3 Read online

  'Inspector, forgive me troubling you,' came a clear voice with a Welsh accent, as soon as he announced himself, 'but are you Jennifer Horton's boy?'

  Horton froze. It was the first time in years he had heard anyone speak his mother's name. The breath caught in his throat. His heart skipped a beat. Maybe he hadn't heard correctly.

  'Hello,' the woman's voice came down the line to him. 'Are you there?'

  'Why do you want to know?' he asked rather harshly.

  'I don't mean to be rude,' she said nervously, catching his tone. 'But there is a reference to a Jennifer Horton in the late Reverend's Gilmore's papers.'

  Who on earth was the Reverend Gilmore? What was she talking about?

  'I guess I'm not making much sense,' she continued, interpreting his silence. 'I'm Reverend Gilmore's temporary replacement at St Agnes's in Portsea. He sadly passed away yesterday evening. I've been going through the things in his study and I've found some papers that refer to you. In the margin of one there is a note in Reverend Gilmore's handwriting, which says, "Jennifer Horton's boy". I just wondered…'

  Horton stared at the telephone with a mixture of incredulity and dismay. He didn't want to think about the woman who had abandoned him. She was the past, dead and forgotten. Or rather she had been until now. The small voice at the back of his mind was urging him to ignore this. He should leave the past alone and tell the vicar to burn the papers, but he found himself saying, 'Where are you?'

  'At the vicarage in Benton Close.'

  He glanced at his watch. It was already seven thirty. He was off duty and there was nothing he could do on the Brundall case. Plenty to do in CID though, whispered a little voice. Aloud he said, 'I'll be there in ten minutes.'

  Five

  It wasn't what he had expected. The vicarage was one of twelve council houses set around a straggly and forlorn piece of greenery that couldn't by any stretch of imagination be called grass. Horton parked the Harley outside the ugly semi-detached house typical of the 1960s and, as he gazed up at it, he wondered how the late Reverend Gilmore had known his mother. From his memory of her, he couldn't see her being friendly with a vicar. Bookmakers and gamblers maybe, he thought with bitterness. And yet what did he really know about her? She had walked out on him one winter morning when he was ten. He hadn't seen or heard of her since. He didn't know if the police had investigated her disappearance, he hadn't asked, and he had never made any enquiries himself. Why should he? He'd had years, before joining the police, to fill with bitterness.

  The vicarage gate squeaked as he pushed it open. He'd covered this patch as a constable and had been called to the area many times before, but he couldn't remember a Reverend Gilmore, or this house. There was a Christmas tree in the window but without its lights shining it looked like someone who had arrived at the party wearing the wrong clothes.

  The garden was overgrown and neglected like the house, which badly needed a lick of paint. Perhaps the church really had lost as much money as it purported to have done over the last sixteen years. He lifted his finger to press the bell. Before he could do so, however, the door swung open and a large, square-set, rather plain, middle-aged woman with short white hair and a dog collar smiled a little warily at him. Horton guessed she hadn't expected a policeman on a motorbike dressed in black leathers.

  He quickly introduced himself and showed his warrant card. Her gentle, clear-skinned face broke into a smile. It lit her pale blue eyes and made her far more attractive, but Horton could still see the concern and bafflement in her expression.

  He stepped inside, surprised to find that his heart was going like the clappers. Suddenly the sense of menace that he had experienced at Horsea Marina last night was back with a vengeance. But why? There was no fog here and there was no smell of burning bodies, just a miserable looking damp house with peeling and faded wallpaper and an electric light bulb hanging from the ceiling.

  'It's not very homely, is it?' she said, reading his mind. He thought her Welsh accent not nearly so strong as when he'd spoken to her over the telephone.

  Why had the church allowed the Reverend Gilmore to live like this? He hadn't known him but he didn't think it right that a clergyman should live in such dire conditions.

  Anne Schofield answered his unspoken question with an accuracy that caused him a moment's unease. 'He wouldn't let anyone help him, you know. He refused to have the place decorated. I'm afraid he was a bit eccentric and a hoarder, as you'll see.'

  'How well did you know him?'

  'I'd met him a couple of times. His parishioners and the Dean speak very highly of him. Coffee, Inspector?'

  'No. Thanks.' He wanted this over with as quickly as possible. But he also wanted to find out more about Gilmore and how he came to know his mother. 'How old was Reverend Gilmore when he died?'

  'Fifty-five.'

  Horton started with surprise. He had expected her to say at least seventy. His mind was racing. How old would his mother be now? God, it was hard to remember. He had her birth certificate, along with a photograph, in that Bluebird toffee tin under his bunk. He hadn't looked at it in years. He guessed that she must be about fifty-eight, if she was still alive. Could Gilmore and his mother have been lovers? Could he be Gilmore's son? But, no, that was ridiculous. Why? Horton had never known his father and his mother had never spoken of him. He wasn't named on his birth certificate. He'd learnt to despise the absent father for abandoning him. And he'd hardened his heart against his mother for deserting him. He didn't want to revise those opinions. It involved too much emotion. Think of practical matters, he urged himself.

  'How did Reverend Gilmore die?'

  'A massive stroke. He was taking the Candlelight Christmas Service last night when he collapsed.'

  The church had moved quickly then to put in a replacement vicar and get her into the vicarage.

  She pushed open a door on her left to reveal a forlorn-looking room with a musty smell.

  'It's a bit of mess, see.'

  That was a gross understatement, he thought, staring around at the chaos. He'd seen tidier rooms after they'd been ransacked by burglars.

  Horton followed her as she picked her way through the books and papers that littered the floor. He couldn't help treading on most of them. Ahead, buried under an avalanche of papers, was a battered old desk and behind it a swivel leather chair.

  Anne Schofield picked up a pile of yellowing newspapers which had been stacked on the floor behind the chair, and as she did so Horton glanced out of the window at the rear garden. It was tiny but seemed even smaller because of the high brick wall that gave on to the naval base. Then he caught sight of a concrete structure in the right-hand corner of the garden.

  'It's an air-raid shelter left over from the war,' she explained, obviously following the direction of his glance. 'I don't know if there's anything inside it apart from rats. I haven't had the courage to look yet.'

  He could see four concrete steps leading down to an entrance across which was a sheet of rusting corrugated iron.

  'This is what I found.' Anne pointed at the newspaper on the Reverend Gilmore's desk.

  There was a large part of him that didn't want to look, but his police training and conditioning overrode that. There, staring at him, was an article that had been written in the summer of 1995 and along with it a photograph of him holding a medal to mark the Queen's commendation for bravery. Little good it did him these days, he thought wryly. He had overpowered a thug waving a loaded gun at a postmaster on Hayling Island. He couldn't remember much about it. Instinct had taken over. He hadn't even been on duty. In the margin of the newspaper in neat rounded script were the words: "Jennifer Horton's boy?" just as Anne Schofield had told him.

  It was a shock seeing his mother's name, and with it flooded back the painful memories of hurt and shame as acute as the first time he'd experienced them. It stole the breath from his body and the terrible ache of loneliness that had haunted him most of his life, which had been rekindled by his wrecked marria
ge, swamped him. He wanted to get out of here. He needed space and air. He wanted to seek refuge on the sea; to pit himself against the elements and let them decide if he should survive.

  'There's more.' Anne Schofield's voice pierced his thoughts and with an effort he hauled himself back to the present.

  His heart sank as he flicked through the rest of the newspapers. In every single one, the Reverend Gilmore had put a circle around an article and that article was about him. Jesus! It was as if he was reading a scrapbook on his career. At any moment he expected Michael Aspel to leap out from behind the curtains with a television crew and hand him a big red book, saying, 'This is your life.'

  With curiosity now overcoming his emotions he began to examine the dates. The newspapers were all later than the one where Gilmore had written his mother's name. That had been the article that had sparked this interest in him. But why this obsession?

  'What can you tell me about him?' he asked, making sure to hide the emotion in his voice.

  'Nothing, I'm afraid. I've come from a parish in North Hampshire. You'll need to speak to his parishioners or the Dean.'

  Would he though? He wanted to move on with his life. Emma was his future. It didn't matter that she didn't have paternal grandparents. It was probably for the best that she didn't know who they were. And, he reminded himself, he didn't have time to spare. He had a murderer to catch, and if not that then a pair of yobs who had attacked an American tourist, not to mention all the other thefts, assaults and burglaries piling up on his desk!

  'Thank you for showing me these,' he said politely, with, he hoped, a voice devoid of emotion. 'They're of no interest to me. Reverend Gilmore obviously knew my mother, but I didn't know him.'

  He wanted to get out of here quickly. The place was depressing him. He turned to leave when his eyes caught something written on the crowded blotter. Pushing the pile of newspapers further over, he saw quite clearly standing out from the other scribblings, the words, 'Horsea Marina'. Nothing unusual in that except the words were heavily under lined and appeared to have been written recently. The lettering wasn't as faded as the rest. It was just a coincidence, he told himself. Why then did something click inside him, which he couldn't put his finger on? It was a bit like a light switch going on but the bulb was missing.

  'Did the Reverend Gilmore own a boat?' he asked, hoping that illumination would come with her answer.

  'Not that I know of,' she said, surprised. 'Why?'

  'He's written the name of a marina on his blotter, or perhaps you wrote it?'

  'It wasn't me.' She frowned, puzzled by his line of questioning.

  Why should Reverend Gilmore choose to write those words when his parish didn't extend to the marina some seven miles to the north and west of the city? Perhaps he had a friend or relative who lived at the marina. The explanation could be perfectly simple and probably was, but Horton couldn't help thinking it a coincidence. That was the policeman in him.

  Anne Schofield interrupted his thoughts. 'What would you like me to do with the newspapers?'

  'Burn them or throw them out for recycling,' he said quickly and firmly. The past was no use to him.

  He saw her eyeing him closely. She looked troubled. 'And if I find any other reference to you or Jennifer Horton do you want me to call you?' she asked gently.

  He wanted to say no, but knew he couldn't. After a moment he retrieved a card from his jacket and said, 'You can contact me on my mobile.'

  It wasn't until he was on his way home that he wished he'd taken that piece of blotting paper. He told himself that lots of people lived and worked at Horsea Marina, and Gilmore could have known any of them. But that fresh blue ink bothered him as much as the discovery that Gilmore had known his mother. And it continued to nag at him when he went for a run.

  He didn't have his mother down as a churchgoer, but if Gilmore had been his father then he would only have been seventeen and his mother eighteen when he'd been conceived. Had she run away from home when she had discovered she was pregnant? Perhaps she had been thrown out. In 1968 times weren't so enlightened and people weren't tolerant towards unmarried mothers. Maybe he still had grandparents alive in Portsmouth who knew nothing about him, or rather who didn't want to know about him, which was more likely.

  It was a foul night with lashing rain and gale-force winds blowing off a turbulent sea and Horton was glad to shower and get back to the boat. He called the incident room to be told there was still no sign of Sherbourne. He hadn't returned to his office or his home and calls to the hospital had drawn a blank. So where was he?

  Horton shivered, not from the cold but from the conviction that something must have happened to him and it didn't bode well. If Guilbert hadn't vouched for him then Horton might have thought, like Dennings, that Sherbourne was a suspect in a murder case and had run away.

  Sitting on his bunk, with the wind howling through the masts and the rain drumming on the coach roof, Horton tried not to think about his mother. It was pointless. Anne Schofield's call had resurrected so many emotions in him that he knew he couldn't put it off any longer. With a racing heart and dry throat he reached out and lifted the cushions on the opposite bunk. Stretching a hand into the space underneath, he retrieved a battered old Bluebird Toffee tin. His hand hovered over it. Then with a breath he threw open the lid and removed a photograph.

  It had been years since he'd looked at it and now, with his heart beating fast and not because of his physical exertions, he stared at the woman with the little boy beside her. He must have been about five or six when this picture had been taken. He could recall nothing about the circumstances although he recognized the location. It had been taken down by the harbour entrance where the Gosport chain ferry had once traversed across the narrow channel. His mother was holding a glass and he was clutching a packet of crisps. She was dressed in a pair of flared red trousers, a white jumper with sweetheart neckline and a wide-brimmed floppy hat over her shoulder-length blonde hair. He was in shorts and a T-shirt. It was clearly summer. How old was she? Early twenties? Who had taken the photograph? His mother's boyfriend? Could that have been the Reverend Gilmore?

  Horton racked his brains, trying to recall the day, but it eluded him. Behind his mother was the sparkling blue sea of Portsmouth Harbour and to her right he could make out the dockyard as it had been before its transformation into the select waterfront complex of shops, restaurants and luxury apartments that was now Oyster Quays.

  He shoved the photograph back in the tin and put it under his bunk. He tried to sleep but images and words from the day's events swirled around in his head determined to wake him every half an hour. He was rather glad when his phone rang and he reached across the bunk for it, trying to see the time.

  He half expected to hear Cantelli's voice, but it was Uckfield who growled down the line.

  'There's been another fire.'

  'Where?' Horton was suddenly wide awake. He swung his legs over the side of the bunk and grabbed his watch. He was amazed to see it was 5.25 a.m.

  'Guernsey.'

  Horton's heart sank. Of course it could be Brundall's house, but Guilbert and his officers had already been inside that, so not much point in setting fire to it now. There was only one place that it could be and the thought sent a shudder through him.

  He said, 'Sherbourne's office?'

  'Spot on.'

  Coincidence? Not bloody likely.

  'How bad?'

  The answer was in Uckfield's silence.

  Horton caught his breath. 'Sherbourne's dead?'

  'Yes.'

  Six

  Friday: 6 A.M.

  'It looks as though Sherbourne was already dead when the fire started at about two a.m.,' Uckfield said, as Horton unzipped his leather jacket and, slinging it on a desk in the incident suite, placed his helmet on top of it. They were the only two there.

  So where was Dennings? Horton wanted to ask. Surely Uckfield had called him?

  'Did the arsonist use Sherbourne's keys to
get into the offices?' asked Horton.

  'There was no forced entry if that's what you mean, although a window was broken. But the fire investigation officer says that was where the firebomb was thrown inside. The building is practically gutted and Sherbourne a mass of charred bones.'

  Horton tried not to recall the picture of Brundall's remains on the pontoon, but didn't quite manage it. Peter Kingston's description of the solicitor flitted through his mind: "About your height, slim, mid fifties. Biggish nose and hawk-like eyes." Not any more, he thought.

  Uckfield said, 'Sherbourne's car has also been found flashed up. Guilbert says they'll be lucky to get its make and registration number never mind any prints. What the bloody hell did Brundall tell or give Sherbourne?' Uckfield cried, exasperated. 'If Sherbourne was killed because Brundall made a new will then we need to find his original heir bloody quickly. I would say he's our prime suspect.'

  'Only problem is, neither DC Marsden nor Inspector Guilbert can find a relative.'

  'Must be someone else then. And all the bloody files in that solicitor's office have gone up in smoke. Great!' Uckfield rubbed a hand across his eyes. Horton wondered what time he'd been hauled from his bed. The big man looked as though he hadn't had any sleep, and only a change of clothes told Horton he had been home. Horton doubted if John Guilbert had even had that luxury.

  Uckfield said, 'I'm sending Dennings to Guernsey.'

  And that will go down like a lukewarm lager on a hot summer's night. Maybe he should call Guilbert and warn him, Horton thought as Trueman walked in.

  Uckfield hauled himself off the desk.

  'Sergeant, get Inspector Dennings on the first available flight to Guernsey.'

  Trueman looked as if he was about to say 'with pleasure' then obviously thought better of it.

  Horton said, 'Where is Dennings?'

  'On his way. I called him after I telephoned you and told him to pack a bag.'

  Horton pointedly consulted his watch. 'Maybe he's lost his passport.' Uckfield scowled at him. They all knew you didn't need one for visiting Guernsey. 'Or perhaps he doesn't know what to wear.'